Thanks for your thoughtful response!
Don’t worry, I’m not looking to be a firebrand of any sort these days. Haha.
Anyway, I’m less concerned with individual beliefs or whether “so and so” is racist than I am with the white supremacist foundations of our country. I also should probably clarify that I don’t use “racist” as an insult. It’s more about unrecognized or unacknowledged advantages white people have over everyone else in this country … not individually. We all have our hardships. But systemically. This video below delves further into it, and I highly recommend it to gain a different perspective on being called “racist,” and how it’s not an accusation. This reframing is important to make the conversation less about individuals (a consequence of neoliberal individualism perhaps?) and more about institutions. https://vimeo.com/147760743
I’m not trying to say anything extreme. It’s just about introspection, so I was operating under the assumption that “racist” isn’t an insult but a call to think about systems of oppression from which white people benefit (again, see video) and seek to uphold directly and indirectly.
